(Story by Marco Stoovelaar; Photos courtesy of National Baseball Hall of Fame)
 Former player, broadcaster Joe Garagiola passed away
Nederlands
IN MEMORIAM 
...Joe Garagiola...
(1926 - 2016)
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 PHOENIX, Arizona (USA) -
Former Major League-player Joe Garagiola, who later became a beloved broadcaster, passed away on Wednesday (March 23) at the age of 90.
Joseph Henry Garagiola, Sr., who turned 90 on February 12, grew up in the same street as Yogi Berra, Elizabeth Street in an Italian-American neighborhood in St. Louis, which is known as The Hill.
The two both were catcher and became good friends.
Like Berra, Garagiola also had a lot of humour and anecdotes, which later were published in a book.
He later wrote two more books.
A famous quote of Garagiola is how he looked back to his career:
,,Not only was I not the best catcher in the Major Leagues, I wasn't even the best catcher on my street.
My friend Yogi saw to that.''
Yogi Berra passed away on September 22 last year.
He also was 90 years old.
At age 16, Garagiola signed a contract with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1942, but he was then enlisted and fought in the US Army during World War II.
He then returned to the Cardinals, with whom he made his Major League-debut in 1946.
He played for the Cardinals for six seasons (1946-1951), then was traded during the 1951 season to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
In 1953, he again was involved in a trade, this time from the Pirates to the Chicago Cubs, who traded him in 1954 to the New York Giants.
Garagiola, who retired early in 1955, played in 676 games, hitting 481 basehits, including 42 homeruns.
He scored 198 runs and batted in 255.
In 1946, as a 20-year old rookie, he played with the Cardinals in the World Series against the Boston Red Sox.
The Cards won the Series, 4-3.
This was Garagiola's only World Series.
Coincidentally, in that same Series, for the Red Sox, a future Hall of Famer also played in his lone World Series, being famous slugger Ted Wiliams.
Garagiola played only nine seasons in the Major League, but became an icon as a radio- and TV-announcer.
As an announcer, Garagiola had a pleasant voice and he regularly used informative, historic and also humouristic stories during his accounts of the games.
Shortly after he had retired as a player, Garagiola became the radio-announcer for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1955, which kept doing through 1962.
In 1961, he covered baseball-games for national radio on NBC, including the World Series.
Garagiola also was the televion play-by-play announcer for a period of three years with the New York Yankees (1965-1967).
...Joe Garagiola interviews Stan Musial (left) and Yogi Berra in 1960... |
Later, he became a TV-announcer for NBC, for whom he did Game of the Week, as well as live broadcasts.
For TV, Garagiola covered the World Series, the National League Championship Series and All Star Games and was associated with NBC for almost thirty years.
During those broadcasts, he was joined by other wellknown announcers such as Harry Caray, Curt Gowdy and Vin Scully, who will return this season as the announcer of the games of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The webmaster of Grand Slam * Stats & News has heard many broadcasts, listening to these iconic voices.
After the 1988 World Series, Garagiola resigned from NBC Sports.
Hereafter, Garagiola also was a commentator of the California Angels (1990) and Arizona Diamondbacks (1998-2012).
He retired as a broadcaster in February, 2013.
For his work as a broadcaster, Garagiola won the Ford C. Frick Award for excellence in broadcasting in 1991.
In 2014, he won the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the sport.
However, he was unable to be at the ceremony, due to health problems.
Both awards are handed out by the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Besides doing a lot of baseball-games as announcer on radio and television, Garagiola also became a wellknown face on TV in another role.
He frequently was a co-host of the The Today Show, was the guest host several times of the The Tonight Show and made several appearances on game shows, as host or panelist.
With the The Today Show, Garagiola was a panelist in 1967-1973, then again in 1990-1992.
With the The Tonight Show, he filled in a few times for famous host Johnny Carson in the late sixties.
Garagiola also was the host of several game shows, including To Tell The Truth, Memory Game, Sale of the Century and He Said, She Said from 1969 through the seventies.
Garagiola was one of the founders of Baseball Assistance Team (B.A.T.), an organization that helps former players who have met misfortune.
He also campaigned against the use of smokeless tobacco.
For the National Spit Tobacco Education Program, Garagiola travelled to all Major League Spring Training-camps through the years to educate players about the dangers of tobacco and oral cancer.
His son Joe Garagiola, Jr. was the General Manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks in 1997-2005 and currently is the Senior Vice-President of Standards and On-Field Operations for Major League Baseball.
(March 23)
Related Article:
 Legendary Hall of Famer Yogi Berra passed away. (September 23, 2015)
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